But these foreign events, however important in themselves, weretrifling in comparison with a revolution which accompanied them, andwhich, in suddenly raising Athens to the supreme command of alliedGreece, may be regarded at once as the author of the coming greatness--and the subsequent reverses--of that republic.

XII. The habits of Sparta--austere, stern, unsocial--rendered herever more effectual in awing foes than conciliating allies; and themanners of the soldiery were at this time not in any way redeemed orcounterbalanced by those of the chief. Since the battle of Plataea aremarkable change was apparent in Pausanias. Glory had made himarrogant, and sudden luxury ostentatious. He had graven on the goldentripod, dedicated by the confederates to the Delphic god, aninscription, claiming exclusively to himself, as the general of theGrecian army, the conquest of the barbarians--an egotism no less atvariance with the sober pride of Sparta, than it was offensive to thejust vanity of the allies. The inscription was afterward erased bythe Spartan government, and another, citing only the names of theconfederate cities, and silent as to that of Pausanias, wassubstituted in its place.

XIII. To a man of this arrogance, and of a grasping and alreadysuccessful ambition, circumstances now presented great andirresistible temptation. Though leader of the Grecian armies, he wasbut the uncle and proxy of the young Spartan king--the time must comewhen his authority would cease, and the conqueror of the superbMardonius sink into the narrow and severe confines of a Spartancitizen. Possessed of great talents and many eminent qualities, theybut served the more to discontent him with the limits of theirlegitimate sphere and sterility of the Spartan life. And thisdiscontent, operating on a temper naturally haughty, evinced itself ina manner rude, overbearing, and imperious, which the spirit of hisconfederates was ill calculated to suffer or forgive.

But we can scarcely agree with the ancient historians in attributingthe ascendency of the Athenians alone, or even chiefly, to the conductof Pausanias. The present expedition was naval, and the greater partof the confederates at Byzantium were maritime powers. The superiorfleet and the recent naval glories of the Athenians could not fail togive them, at this juncture, a moral pre-eminence over the otherallies; and we shall observe that the Ionians, and those who hadlately recovered their freedom from the Persian yoke [133], wereespecially desirous to exchange the Spartan for the Athenian command.Connected with the Athenians by origin--by maritime habits--by akindred suavity and grace of temperament--by the constant zeal of theAthenians for their liberties (which made, indeed, the first cause ofthe Persian war)--it was natural that the Ionian Greeks should preferthe standard of Athens to that of a Doric state; and the propositionof the Spartans (baffled by the Athenian councils) to yield up theIonic settlements to the barbarians, could not but bequeath a lastingresentment to those proud and polished colonies.

XIV. Aware of the offence he had given, and disgusted himself alikewith his allies and his country, the Spartan chief became driven bynature and necessity to a dramatic situation, which a future Schillermay perhaps render yet more interesting than the treason of thegorgeous Wallenstein, to whose character that of Pausanias has beenindirectly likened [134]. The capture of Byzantium brought theSpartan regent into contact with many captured and noble Persians[135], among whom were some related to Xerxes himself. With theseconversing, new and dazzling views were opened to his ambition. Hecould not but recall the example of Demaratus, whose exile from thebarren dignities of Sparta had procured him the luxuries and thesplendour of oriental pomp, with the delegated authority of three ofthe fairest cities of Aeolia. Greater in renown than Demaratus, hewas necessarily more aspiring in his views. Accordingly, he privatelyreleased his more exalted prisoners, pretending they had escaped, andfinally explained whatever messages he had intrusted by them toXerxes, in a letter to the king, confided to an Eretrian namedGongylus, who was versed in the language and the manners of Persia,and to whom he had already deputed the government of Byzantium. Inthis letter Pausanias offered to assist the king in reducing Spartaand the rest of Greece to the Persian yoke, demanding, in recompense,the hand of the king's daughter, with an adequate dowry of possessionsand of power.

XV. The time had passed when a Persian monarch could deride theloftiness of a Spartan's pretensions--Xerxes received thecommunications with delight, and despatched Artabazus to succeedMegabates in Phrygia, and to concert with the Spartan upon the meanswhereby to execute their joint design [136]. But while Pausanias wasin the full flush of his dazzled and grasping hopes, his fall was athand. Occupied with his new projects, his natural haughtinessincreased daily. He never accosted the officers of the allies butwith abrupt and overbearing insolence; he insulted the military prideby sentencing many of the soldiers to corporeal chastisement, or tostand all day with an iron anchor on their shoulders [137]. Hepermitted none to seek water, forage, or litter, until the Spartanswere first supplied--those who attempted it were driven away by rods.Even Aristides, seeking to remonstrate, was repulsed rudely. "I amnot at leisure," said the Spartan, with a frown. [138]

Complaints of this treatment were despatched to Sparta, and in themean while the confederates, especially the officers of Chios, Samos,and Lesbos, pressed Aristides to take on himself the general command,and protect them from the Spartan's insolence. The Athenian artfullyreplied, that he saw the necessity of the proposition, but that itought first to be authorized by some action which would render itimpossible to recede from the new arrangement once formed.

The hint was fiercely taken; and a Samian and a Chian officer,resolving to push matters to the extreme, openly and boldly attackedthe galley of Pausanias himself at the head of the fleet.Disregarding his angry menaces, now impotent, this assault wasimmediately followed up by a public transfer of allegiance; and theaggressors, quitting the Spartan, arrayed themselves under theAthenian, banners. Whatever might have been the consequences of thisinsurrection were prevented by the sudden recall of Pausanias. Theaccusations against him had met a ready hearing in Sparta, and thatwatchful government had already received intimation of his intrigueswith the Mede. On his arrival in Sparta, Pausanias was immediatelysummoned to trial, convicted in a fine for individual and privatemisdemeanours, but acquitted of the principal charge of treason withthe Persians--not so much from the deficiency as from the abundance ofproof [139]; and it was probably prudent to avoid, if possible, thescandal which the conviction of the general might bring upon thenation.

The Spartans sent Dorcis, with some colleagues, to replace Pausaniasin the command; but the allies were already too disgusted with theyoke of that nation to concede it. And the Athenian ascendency washourly confirmed by the talents, the bearing, and the affable andgracious manners of Aristides. With him was joined an associate ofhigh hereditary name and strong natural abilities, whose character itwill shortly become necessary to place in detail before the reader.This comate was no less a person than Cimon, the son of the greatMiltiades.

XVI. Dorcis, finding his pretensions successfully rebutted, returnedhome; and the Spartans, never prone to foreign enterprise, anxious forexcuses to free themselves from prosecuting further the Persian war,and fearful that renewed contentions might only render yet moreunpopular the Spartan name, sent forth no fresh claimants to thecommand; they affected to yield that honour, with cheerful content, tothe Athenians. Thus was effected without a blow, and with theconcurrence of her most dreaded rival, that eventful revolution, whichsuddenly raised Athens, so secondary a state before the Persian war,to the supremacy over Greece. So much, when nations have an equalglory, can the one be brought to surpass the other (B. C. 477) by thesuperior wisdom of individuals. The victory of Plataea was wonprincipally by Sparta, then at the head of Greece. And the generalwho subdued the Persians surrendered the results of his victory to thevery ally from whom the sagacious jealousy of his countrymen hadsought most carefully to exclude even the precautions of defence!

XVII. Aristides, now invested with the command of all the allies,save those of the Peloponnesus who had returned home, strengthened theAthenian power by every semblance of moderation.

Hitherto the Grecian confederates had sent their deputies to thePeloponnesus. Aristides, instead of naming Athens, which might haveexcited new jealousies, proposed the sacred Isle of Delos, a spotpeculiarly appropriate, since it once had been the navel of the Ioniancommerce, as the place of convocation and the common treasury: thetemple was to be the senate house. A new distribution of the taxeslevied on each state, for the maintenance of the league, was ordained.The objects of the league were both defensive and offensive; first, toguard the Aegaean coasts and the Grecian Isles; and, secondly, toundertake measures for the further weakening of the Persian power.Aristides was elected arbitrator in the relative proportions of thegeneral taxation. In this office, which placed the treasures ofGreece at his disposal, he acted with so disinterested a virtue, thathe did not even incur the suspicion of having enriched himself, andwith so rare a fortune that he contented all the allies. The total,raised annually, and with the strictest impartiality, was four hundredand sixty talents (computed at about one hundred and fifteen thousandpounds).

Greece resounded with the praises of Aristides; it was afterwardequally loud in reprobation of the avarice of the Athenians. For withthe appointment of Aristides commenced the institution of officersstyled Hellenotamiae, or treasurers of Greece; they became a permanentmagistracy--they were under the control of the Athenians; and thusthat people were made at once the generals and the treasurers ofGreece. But the Athenians, unconscious as yet of the power they hadattained--their allies yet more blind--it seemed now, that the morethe latter should confide, the more the former should forbear. So dothe most important results arise from causes uncontemplated by theprovidence of statesmen, and hence do we learn a truth which shouldnever be forgotten--that that power is ever the most certain ofendurance and extent, the commencement of which is made popular bymoderation.

XVIII. Thus, upon the decay of the Isthmian Congress, rose intoexistence the great Ionian league; and thus was opened to the ambitionof Athens the splendid destiny of the empire of the Grecian seas. Thepre-eminence of Sparta passed away from her, though invisibly andwithout a struggle, and, retiring within herself, she was probablyunaware of the decline of her authority; still seeing herPeloponnesian allies gathering round her, subordinate and submissive,and, by refusing assistance, refusing also allegiance to the new queenof the Ionian league. His task fulfilled, Aristides probably returnedto Athens, and it was at this time and henceforth that it became hispolicy to support the power of Cimon against the authority ofThemistocles [140]. To that eupatrid, joined before with himself, wasnow intrusted the command of the Grecian fleet.

To great natural abilities, Cimon added every advantage of birth andcircumstance. His mother was a daughter of Olorus, a Thracian prince;his father the great Miltiades. On the death of the latter, it isrecorded, and popularly believed, that Cimon, unable to pay the fineto which Miltiades was adjudged, was detained in custody until awealthy marriage made by his sister Elpinice, to whom he was tenderly,and ancient scandal whispered improperly, attached, released him fromconfinement, and the brother-in-law paid the debt. "Thus severe andharsh," says Nepos, "was his entrance upon manhood." [141] But it isvery doubtful whether Cimon was ever imprisoned for the state-debtincurred by his father--and his wealth appears to have beenconsiderable even before he regained his patrimony in the Chersonese,or enriched himself with the Persian spoils. [142]

In early youth, like Themistocles, his conduct had been wild anddissolute [143]; and with his father from a child, he had acquired,with the experience, something of the license, of camps. LikeThemistocles also, he was little skilled in the gracefulaccomplishments of his countrymen; he cultivated neither the art ofmusic, nor the brilliancies of Attic conversation; but power andfortune, which ever soften nature, afterward rendered his habitsintellectual and his tastes refined. He had not the smooth and artfulaffability of Themistocles, but to a certain roughness of manner wasconjoined that hearty and ingenuous frankness which ever conciliatesmankind, especially in free states, and which is yet more popular whenunited to rank. He had distinguished himself highly by his zeal inthe invasion of the Medes, and the desertion of Athens for Salamis;and his valour in the seafight had confirmed the promise of hisprevious ardour. Nature had gifted him with a handsome countenanceand a majestic stature, recommendations in all, but especially inpopular states--and the son of Miltiades was welcomed, not less by thepeople than by the nobles, when he applied for a share in theadministration of the state. Associated with Aristides, first in theembassy to Sparta, and subsequently in the expeditions to Cyprus andByzantium, he had profited by the friendship and the lessons of thatgreat man, to whose party he belonged, and who saw in Cimon a lessinvidious opponent than himself to the policy or the ambition ofThemistocles.

By the advice of Aristides, Cimon early sought every means toconciliate the allies, and to pave the way to the undivided command heafterward obtained. And it is not improbable that Themistocles mightwillingly have ceded to him the lead in a foreign expedition, whichremoved from the city so rising and active an opponent. Theappointment of Cimon promised to propitiate the Spartans, who everpossessed a certain party in the aristocracy of Athens--who peculiarlyaffected Cimon, and whose hardy character and oligarchical policy theblunt genius and hereditary prejudices of that young noble were wellfitted to admire and to imitate. Cimon was, in a word, precisely theman desired by three parties as the antagonist of Themistocles; viz.,the Spartans, the nobles, and Aristides, himself a host. All thingsconspired to raise the son of Miltiades to an eminence beyond hisyears, but not his capacities.

XIX. Under Cimon the Athenians commenced their command [144], bymarching against a Thracian town called Eion, situated on the banks ofthe river Strymon, and now garrisoned by a Persian noble. The townwas besieged (B. C. 476), and the inhabitants pressed by famine, whenthe Persian commandant, collecting his treasure upon a pile of wood,on which were placed his slaves, women, and children--set fire to thepile [145]. After this suicide, seemingly not an uncommon mode ofself-slaughter in the East, the garrison surrendered, and itsdefenders, as usual in such warfare, were sold for slaves.

From Eion the victorious confederates proceeded to Scyros, a smallisland in the Aegean, inhabited by the Dolopians, a tribe addicted topiratical practices, deservedly obnoxious to the traders of theAegean, and who already had attracted the indignation and vengeance ofthe Amphictyonic assembly. The isle occupied, and the piratesexpelled, the territory was colonized by an Attic population.

An ancient tradition had, as we have seen before, honoured the soil ofScyros with the possession of the bones of the Athenian Theseus--someyears after the conquest of the isle, in the archonship of Aphepsion[146], or Apsephion, an oracle ordained the Athenians to search forthe remains of their national hero, and the skeleton of a man of greatstature, with a lance of brass and a sword by its side was discovered,and immediately appropriated to Theseus. The bones were placed withgreat ceremony in the galley of Cimon, who was then probably on avisit of inspection to the new colony, and transported to Athens.Games were instituted in honour of this event, at which were exhibitedthe contests of the tragic poets; and, in the first of these,Sophocles is said to have made his earliest appearance, and gained theprize from Aeschylus (B. C. 469).

XXI. It is about the period of Cimon's conquest of Eion and Scyros(B. C. 476) that we must date the declining power of Themistocles.That remarkable man had already added, both to domestic and to Spartanenmities, the general displeasure of the allies. After baffling theproposition of the Spartans to banish from the Amphictyonic assemblythe states that had not joined in the anti-Persic confederacy, he hadsailed round the isles and extorted money from such as had been guiltyof Medising: the pretext might be just, but the exactions wereunpopularly levied. Nor is it improbable that the accusations againsthim of enriching his own coffers as well as the public treasury hadsome foundation. Profoundly disdaining money save as a means to anend, he was little scrupulous as to the sources whence he sustained apower which he yet applied conscientiously to patriotic purposes.Serving his country first, he also served himself; and honest upon onegrand and systematic principle, he was often dishonest in details.

His natural temper was also ostentatious; like many who have risenfrom an origin comparatively humble, he had the vanity to seek tooutshine his superiors in birth--not more by the splendour of geniusthan by the magnificence of parade. At the Olympic games, the base-born son of Neocles surpassed the pomp of the wealthy and illustriousCimon; his table was hospitable, and his own life soft and luxuriant[147]; his retinue numerous beyond those of his contemporaries; and headopted the manners of the noble exactly in proportion as he courtedthe favour of the populace. This habitual ostentation could not failto mingle with the political hostilities of the aristocracy thedisdainful jealousies of offended pride; for it is ever the weaknessof the high-born to forgive less easily the being excelled in geniusthan the being outshone in state by those of inferior origin. Thesame haughtiness which offended the nobles began also to displease thepeople; the superb consciousness of his own merits wounded the vanityof a nation which scarcely permitted its greatest men to share thereputation it arrogated to itself. The frequent calumnies utteredagainst him obliged Themistocles to refer to the actions he hadperformed; and what it had been illustrious to execute, it becamedisgustful to repeat. "Are you weary," said the great man, bitterly,"to receive benefits often from the same hand?" [148] He offended thenational conceit yet more by building, in the neighbourhood of his ownresidence, a temple to Diana, under the name of Aristobule, or "Dianaof the best counsel;" thereby appearing to claim to himself the meritof giving the best counsels.

It is probable, however, that Themistocles would have conquered allparty opposition, and that his high qualities would have more thancounterbalanced his defects in the eyes of the people, if he had stillcontinued to lead the popular tide. But the time had come when thedemagogue was outbid by an aristocrat--when the movement he no longerheaded left him behind, and the genius of an individual could nolonger keep pace with the giant strides of an advancing people.

XXII. The victory at Salamis was followed by a democratic result.That victory had been obtained by the seamen, who were mostly of thelowest of the populace--the lowest of the populace began, therefore,to claim, in political equality, the reward of military service. AndAristotle, whose penetrating intellect could not fail to notice thechanges which an event so glorious to Greece produced in Athens, hasadduced a similar instance of change at Syracuse, when the mariners ofthat state, having, at a later period, conquered the Athenians,converted a mixed republic to a pure democracy. The destruction ofhouses and property by Mardonius--the temporary desertion by theAthenians of their native land--the common danger and the commonglory, had broken down many of the old distinctions, and the spirit ofthe nation was already far more democratic than the constitution.Hitherto, qualifications of property were demanded for the holding ofcivil offices. But after the battle of Plataea, Aristides, the leaderof the aristocratic party, proposed and carried the abolition of suchqualifications, allowing to ail citizens, with or without property, ashare in the government, and ordaining that the archons should bechosen out of the whole body; the form of investigation as to moralcharacter was still indispensable. This change, great as it was,appears, like all aristocratic reforms, to have been a compromise[149] between concession and demand. And the prudent Aristidesyielded what was inevitable, to prevent the greater danger ofresistance. It may be ever remarked, that the people value more aconcession from the aristocratic party than a boon from their ownpopular leaders. The last can never equal, and the first can soeasily exceed, the public expectation.

XXIII. This decree, uniting the aristocratic with the more democraticparty, gave Aristides and his friends an unequivocal ascendency overThemistocles, which, however, during the absence of Aristides andCimon, and the engrossing excitement of events abroad, was not plainlyvisible for some years; and although, on his return to Athens,Aristides himself prudently forbore taking an active part against hisancient rival, he yet lent all the influence of his name andfriendship to the now powerful and popular Cimon. The victories, themanners, the wealth, the birth of the son of Miltiades were supportedby his talents and his ambition. It was obvious to himself and to hisparty that, were Themistocles removed, Cimon would become the firstcitizen of Athens.

XXIV. Such were the causes that long secretly undermined, that atlength openly stormed, the authority of the hero of Salamis; and atthis juncture we may conclude, that the vices of his character avengedthemselves on the virtues. His duplicity and spirit of intrigue,exercised on behalf of his country, it might be supposed, wouldhereafter be excited against it. And the pride, the ambition, thecraft that had saved the people might serve to create a despot.

Themistocles was summoned to the ordeal of the ostracism and condemnedby the majority of suffrages (B. C. 471). Thus, like Aristides, notpunished for offences, but paying the honourable penalty of rising bygenius to that state of eminence which threatens danger to theequality of republics.

He departed from Athens, and chose his refuge at Argos, whose hatredto Sparta, his deadliest foe, promised him the securest protection.

XXV. Death soon afterward removed Aristides from all competitorshipwith Cimon; according to the most probable accounts, he died atAthens; and at the time of Plutarch his monument was still to be seenat Phalerum. His countrymen, who, despite all plausible charges, werenever ungrateful except where their liberties appeared imperilled(whether rightly or erroneously our documents are too scanty toprove), erected his monument at the public charge, portioned his threedaughters, and awarded to his son Lysimachus a grant of one hundredminae of silver, a plantation of one hundred plethra [150] of land,and a pension of four drachmae a day (double the allowance of anAthenian ambassador).

CHAPTER II.

Popularity and Policy of Cimon.--Naxos revolts from the IonianLeague.--Is besieged by Cimon.--Conspiracy and Fate of Pausanias.--Flight and Adventures of Themistocles.--His Death.

I. The military abilities and early habits of Cimon naturallyconspired with past success to direct his ambition rather to warlikethan to civil distinctions. But he was not inattentive to the artswhich were necessary in a democratic state to secure and confirm hispower. Succeeding to one, once so beloved and ever so affable asThemistocles, he sought carefully to prevent all disadvantageouscontrast. From the spoils of Byzantium and Sestos he received a vastaddition to his hereditary fortunes. And by the distribution of histreasures, he forestalled all envy at their amount. He threw open hisgardens to the public, whether foreigners or citizens--he maintained atable to which men of every rank freely resorted, though probablythose only of his own tribe [151]--he was attended by a numeroustrain, who were ordered to give mantles to what citizen soever--agedand ill-clad--they encountered; and to relieve the necessitous by aimsdelicately and secretly administered. By these artful devices herendered himself beloved, and concealed the odium of his politicsbeneath the mask of his charities. For while he courted the favour,he advanced not the wishes, of the people. He sided with thearistocratic party, and did not conceal his attachment to theoligarchy of Sparta. He sought to content the people with himself, inorder that he might the better prevent discontent with their position.But it may be doubted whether Cimon did not, far more than any of hispredecessors, increase the dangers of a democracy by vulgarizing itsspirit. The system of general alms and open tables had the effectthat the abuses of the Poor Laws [152] have had with us. Itaccustomed the native poor to the habits of indolent paupers, and whatat first was charity soon took the aspect of a right. Hence much ofthe lazy turbulence, and much of that licentious spirit of exactionfrom the wealthy, that in a succeeding age characterized the mobs ofAthens. So does that servile generosity, common to an anti-popularparty, when it affects kindness in order to prevent concession,ultimately operate against its own secret schemes. And so much lessreally dangerous is it to exalt, by constitutional enactments, theauthority of a people, than to pamper, by the electioneeringcajoleries of a selfish ambition, the prejudices which thus settleinto vices, or the momentary exigences thus fixed into permanentdemands.

II. While the arts or manners of Cimon conciliated the favour, hisintegrity won the esteem, of the people. In Aristides he found theexample, not more of his aristocratic politics than of his loftyhonour. A deserter from Persia, having arrived at Athens with greattreasure, and being harassed by informers, sought the protection ofCimon by gifts of money.

"Would you have me," said the Athenian, smiling, "your mercenary oryour friend?"

"My friend!" replied the barbarian.

"Then take back your gifts." [153]

III. In the mean while the new ascendency of Athens was alreadyendangered. The Carystians in the neighbouring isle of Euboea openlydefied her fleet, and many of the confederate states, seeingthemselves delivered from all immediate dread of another invasion ofthe Medes, began to cease contributions both to the Athenian navy andthe common treasury. For a danger not imminent, service becameburdensome and taxation odious. And already some well-foundedjealousy of the ambition of Athens increased the reluctance to augmenther power. Naxos was the first island that revolted from theconditions of the league, and thither Cimon, having reduced theCarystians, led a fleet numerous and well equipped.

Whatever the secret views of Cimon for the aggrandizement of hiscountry, he could not but feel himself impelled by his own genius andthe popular expectation not lightly to forego that empire of the sea,rendered to Athens by the profound policy of Themistocles and thefortunate prudence of Aristides; and every motive of Grecian, as wellas Athenian, policy justified the subjugation of the revolters--anevident truth in the science of state policy, but one somewhat hastilylost sight of by those historians who, in the subsequent and unlooked-for results, forgot the necessity of the earlier enterprise. Greecehad voluntarily intrusted to Athens the maritime command of theconfederate states. To her, Greece must consequently look for nodiminution of the national resources committed to her charge; to her,that the conditions of the league were fulfilled, and the commonsafety of Greece ensured. Commander of the forces, she was answerablefor the deserters. Nor, although Persia at present remained tranquiland inert, could the confederates be considered safe from her revenge.No compact of peace had been procured. The more than suspectedintrigues of Xerxes with Pausanias were sufficient proofs that thegreat king did not yet despair of the conquest of Greece. And theperil previously incurred in the want of union among the severalstates was a solemn warning not to lose the advantages of that league,so tardily and so laboriously cemented. Without great dishonour andwithout great imprudence, Athens could not forego the control withwhich she had been invested; if it were hers to provide the means, itwas hers to punish the defaulters; and her duty to Greece thusdecorously and justly sustained her ambition for herself.

IV. And now it is necessary to return to the fortunes of Pausanias,involving in their fall the ruin of one of far loftier virtues andmore unequivocal renown. The recall of Pausanias, the fine inflictedupon him, his narrow escape from a heavier sentence, did not sufficeto draw him, intoxicated as he was with his hopes and passions, fromhis bold and perilous intrigues. It is not improbable that his mindwas already tainted with a certain insanity [154]. And it is acurious physiological fact, that the unnatural constraints of Sparta,when acting on strong passions and fervent imaginations, seem, notunoften, to have produced a species of madness. An anecdote isrecorded [155], which, though romantic, is not perhaps whollyfabulous, and which invests with an interest yet more dramatic thefate of the conqueror of Plataea.

At Byzantium, runs the story, he became passionately enamoured of ayoung virgin named Cleonice. Awed by his power and his sternness, theparents yielded her to his will. The modesty of the maiden made herstipulate that the room might be in total darkness when she stole tohis embraces. But unhappily, on entering, she stumbled against thelight, and the Spartan, asleep at the time, imagined, in the confusionof his sudden waking, that the noise was occasioned by one of hisnumerous enemies seeking his chamber with the intent to assassinatehim. Seizing the Persian cimeter [156] that lay beside him, heplunged it in the breast of the intruder, and the object of hispassion fell dead at his feet. "From that hour," says the biographer,"he could rest no more!" A spectre haunted his nights--the voice ofthe murdered girl proclaimed doom to his ear. It is added, and, if weextend our belief further, we must attribute the apparition to theskill of the priests, that, still tortured by the ghost of Cleonice,he applied to those celebrated necromancers who, at Heraclea [157],summoned by gloomy spells the manes of the dead, and by their aidinvoked the spirit he sought to appease. The shade of Cleoniceappeared and told him, "that soon after his return to Sparta he wouldbe delivered from all his troubles." [158]

Such was the legend repeated, as Plutarch tells us, by manyhistorians; the deed itself was probable, and conscience, even withoutnecromancy, might supply the spectre.

V. Whether or not this story have any foundation in fact, the conductof Pausanias seems at least to have partaken of that inconsideraterecklessness which, in the ancient superstition, preceded thevengeance of the gods. After his trial he had returned to Byzantium,without the consent of the Spartan government. Driven thence by theresentment of the Athenians [159], he repaired, not to Sparta, but toColonae, in Asia Minor, and in the vicinity of the ancient Troy; andthere he renewed his negotiations with the Persian king. Acquaintedwith his designs, the vigilant ephors despatched to him a herald withthe famous scytale. This was an instrument peculiar to the Spartans.To every general or admiral, a long black staff was entrusted; themagistrates kept another exactly similar. When they had anycommunication to make, they wrote it on a roll of parchment, appliedit to their own staff, fold upon fold--then cutting it off, dismissedit to the chief. The characters were so written that they wereconfused and unintelligible until fastened to the stick, and thuscould only be construed by the person for whose eye they wereintended, and to whose care the staff was confided.

The communication Pausanias now received was indeed stern and laconic."Stay," it said, "behind the herald, and war is proclaimed against youby the Spartans."

On receiving this solemn order, even the imperious spirit of Pausaniasdid not venture to disobey. Like Venice, whose harsh, tortuous, butenergetic policy her oligarchy in so many respects resembled, Spartapossessed a moral and mysterious power over the fiercest of her sons.His fate held him in her grasp, and, confident of acquittal, insteadof flying to Persia, the regent hurried to his doom, assured that bythe help of gold he could baffle any accusation. His expectationswere so far well-founded, that, although, despite his rank as regentof the kingdom and guardian of the king, he was thrown into prison bythe ephors, he succeeded, by his intrigues and influence, in procuringhis enlargement: and boldly challenging his accusers, he offered tosubmit to trial.

The government, however, was slow to act. The proud caution of theSpartans was ever loath to bring scandal on their home by publicproceedings against any freeborn citizen--how much more against theuncle of their monarch and the hero of their armies! His power, histalents, his imperious character awed alike private enmity and publicdistrust. But his haughty disdain of their rigid laws, and hiscontinued affectation of the barbarian pomp, kept the governmentvigilant; and though released from prison, the stern ephors were hissentinels. The restless and discontented mind of the expectant son-in-law of Xerxes could not relinquish its daring schemes. And theregent of Sparta entered into a conspiracy, on which it were much tobe desired that our information were more diffuse.

VI. Perhaps no class of men in ancient times excite a more painfuland profound interest than the helots of Sparta. Though, as we havebefore seen, we must reject all rhetorical exaggerations of the savagecruelty to which they were subjected, we know, at least, that theirservitude was the hardest imposed by any of the Grecian states upontheir slaves [160], and that the iron soldiery of Sparta were exposedto constant and imminent peril from their revolts--a proof that thecurse of their bondage had passed beyond the degree which subdues thespirit to that which arouses, and that neither the habit of years, northe swords of the fiercest warriors, nor the spies of the keenestgovernment of Greece had been able utterly to extirpate from humanhearts that law of nature which, when injury passes an allotted, yetrarely visible, extreme, converts suffering to resistance.

Scattered in large numbers throughout the rugged territories ofLaconia--separated from the presence, but not the watch, of theirmaster, these singular serfs never abandoned the hope of liberty.Often pressed into battle to aid their masters, they acquired thecourage to oppose them. Fierce, sullen, and vindictive, they were asdroves of wild cattle, left to range at will, till wanted for theburden or the knife--not difficult to butcher, but impossible to tame.

We have seen that a considerable number of these helots had fought aslight-armed troops at Plataea; and the common danger and the commonglory had united the slaves of the army with the chief. Entering intosomewhat of the desperate and revengeful ambition that, under asimilar constitution, animated Marino Faliero, Pausanias sought, bymeans of the enslaved multitude, to deliver himself from the thraldomof the oligarchy which held prince and slave alike in subjection. Hetampered with the helots, and secretly promised them the rights andliberties of citizens of Sparta, if they would co-operate with hisprojects and revolt at his command.

Slaves are never without traitors; and the ephors learned thepremeditated revolution from helots themselves. Still, slow and wary,those subtle and haughty magistrates suspended the blow--it was notwithout the fullest proof that a royal Spartan was to be condemned onthe word of helots: they continued their vigilance--they obtained theproof they required.

VII. Argilius, a Spartan, with whom Pausanias had once formed thevicious connexion common to the Doric tribes, and who was deep in hisconfidence, was intrusted by the regent with letters to Artabazus.Argilius called to mind that none intrusted with a similar mission hadever returned. He broke open the seals and read what his fearsforeboded, that, on his arrival at the satrap's court, the silence ofthe messenger was to be purchased by his death. He carried the packetto the ephors. That dark and plotting council were resolved yet moreentirely to entangle their guilty victim, and out of his own mouth toextract his secret; they therefore ordered Argilius to take refuge asa suppliant in the sanctuary of the temple of Neptune on MountTaenarus. Within the sacred confines was contrived a cell, which, bya double partition, admitted some of the ephors, who, there concealed,might witness all that passed.

Intelligence was soon brought to Pausanias that, instead of proceedingto Artabazus, his confidant had taken refuge as a suppliant in thetemple of Neptune. Alarmed and anxious, the regent hastened to thesanctuary. Argilius informed him that he had read the letters, andreproached him bitterly with his treason to himself. Pausanias,confounded and overcome by the perils which surrounded him, confessedhis guilt, spoke unreservedly of the contents of the letter, imploredthe pardon of Argilius, and promised him safety and wealth if he wouldleave the sanctuary and proceed on the mission.

The ephors, from their hiding-place, heard all.

On the departure of Pausanias from the sanctuary, his doom was fixed.But, among the more public causes of the previous delay of justice, wemust include the friendship of some of the ephors, which Pausanias hadwon or purchased. It was the moment fixed for his arrest. Pausanias,in the streets, was alone and on foot. He beheld the ephorsapproaching him. A signal from one warned him of his danger. Heturned--he fled. The temple of Minerva Chalcioecus at hand proffereda sanctuary--he gained the sacred confines, and entered a small househard by the temple. The ephors--the officers--the crowd pursued; theysurrounded the refuge, from which it was impious to drag the criminal.Resolved on his death, they removed the roof--blocked up the entrances(and if we may credit the anecdote, that violating human wascharacteristic of Spartan nature, his mother, a crone of great age[161], suggested the means of punishment, by placing, with her ownhand, a stone at the threshold)--and, setting a guard around, left theconqueror of Mardonius to die of famine. When he was at his lastgasp, unwilling to profane the sanctuary by his actual death, theybore him out into the open air, which he only breathed to expire[162]. His corpse, which some of the fiercer Spartans at firstintended to cast in the place of burial for malefactors, was afterwardburied in the neighbourhood of the temple. And thus ended the gloryand the crimes--the grasping ambition and the luxurious ostentation--of the bold Spartan who first scorned and then imitated theeffeminacies of the Persian he subdued.

VIII. Amid the documents of which the ephors possessed themselvesafter the death of Pausanias was a correspondence with Themistocles,then residing in the rival and inimical state of Argos. Yetvindictive against that hero, the Spartan government despatchedambassadors to Athens, accusing him of a share in the conspiracy ofPausanias with the Medes. It seems that Themistocles did not disavowa correspondence with Pausanias, nor affect an absolute ignorance ofhis schemes; but he firmly denied by letter, his only mode of defence,all approval and all participation of the latter. Nor is there anyproof, nor any just ground of suspicion, that he was a party to thebetrayal of Greece. It was consistent, indeed, with his astutecharacter, to plot, to manoeuvre, to intrigue, but for great and notpaltry ends. By possessing himself of the secret, he possessedhimself of the power of Pausanias; and that intelligence might perhapshave enabled him to frustrate the Spartan's treason in the hour ofactual danger to Greece. It is possible that, so far as Sparta alonewas concerned, the Athenian felt little repugnance to any revolutionor any peril confined to a state whose councils it had been the objectof his life to baffle, and whose power it was the manifest interest ofhis native city to impair. He might have looked with complacency onthe intrigues which the regent was carrying on against the Spartangovernment, and which threatened to shake that Doric constitution toits centre. But nothing, either in the witness of history or in thecharacter or conduct of a man profoundly patriotic, even in his vices,favours the notion that he connived at the schemes which implicated,with the Grecian, the Athenian welfare. Pausanias, far less able, wasprobably his tool. By an insight into his projects, Themistoclesmight have calculated on the restoration of his own power. To weakenthe Spartan influence was to weaken his own enemies at Athens; tobreak up the Spartan constitution was to leave Athens herself withouta rival. And if, from the revolt of the helots, Pausanias shouldproceed to an active league with the Persians, Themistocles knewenough of Athens and of Greece to foresee that it was to the victor ofSalamis and the founder of the Grecian navy that all eyes would bedirected. Such seem the most probable views which would have beenopened to the exile by the communications of Pausanias. If so, theywere necessarily too subtle for the crowd to penetrate or understand.The Athenians heard only the accusations of the Spartans; they sawonly the treason of Pausanias; they learned only that Themistocles hadbeen the correspondent of the traitor. Already suspicious of a geniuswhose deep and intricate wiles they were seldom able to fathom, andtrembling at the seeming danger they had escaped, it was naturalenough that the Athenians should accede to the demands of theambassadors. An Athenian, joined with a Lacedaemonian troop, wasordered to seize Themistocles wherever he should be found. Apprizedof his danger, he hastily quitted the Peloponnesus and took refuge atCorcyra. Fear of the vengeance at once of Athens and of Spartainduced the Corcyreans to deny the shelter he sought, but theyhonourably transported him to the opposite continent. His route wasdiscovered--his pursuers pressed upon him. He had entered the countryof Admetus, king of the Molossians, from whose resentment he hadeverything to dread. For he had persuaded the Athenians to reject thealliance once sought by that monarch, and Admetus had vowed vengeance.

Thus situated, the fugitive formed a resolution which a great mindonly could have conceived, and which presents to us one of the mosttouching pictures in ancient history. He repaired to the palace ofAdmetus himself. The prince was absent. He addressed his consort,and, advised by her, took the young child of the royal pair in hishand, and sat down at the hearth--"THEMISTOCLES THE SUPPLIANT!" [163]On the return of the prince he told his name, and bade him not wreakhis vengeance on an exile. "To condemn me now," he said, "would be totake advantage of distress. Honour dictates revenge only among equalsupon equal terms. True that I opposed you once, but on a matter notof life, but of business or of interest. Now surrender me to mypersecutors, and you deprive me of the last refuge of life itself."

IX. Admetus, much affected, bade him rise, and assured him ofprotection. The pursuers arrived; but, faithful to the guest who hadsought his hearth, after a form peculiarly solemn among theMolossians, Admetus refused to give him up, and despatched him,guarded, to the sea-town of Pydna, over an arduous and difficultmountain-road. The sea-town gained, he took ship, disguised andunknown to all the passengers, in a trading vessel bound to Ionia. Astorm arose--the vessel was driven from its course, and impelled righttowards the Athenian fleet, that then under Cimon, his bitterest foe,lay before the Isle of Naxos (B. C. 466).

Prompt and bold in his expedients, Themistocles took aside the masterof the vessel--discovered himself; threatened, if betrayed, to informagainst the master as one bribed to favour his escape; promised, ifpreserved, everlasting gratitude; and urged that the preservation waspossible, if no one during the voyage were permitted, on any pretext,to quit the vessel.

The master of the vessel was won--kept out at sea a day and a night towindward of the fleet, and landed Themistocles in safety at Ephesus.

In the mean while the friends of Themistocles had not been inactive inAthens. On the supposed discovery of his treason, such of hisproperty as could fall into the hands of the government was, as usualin such offences, confiscated to the public use; the amount wasvariously estimated at eighty and a hundred talents [164]. But thegreater part of his wealth--some from Athens, some from Argos--wassecretly conveyed to him at Ephesus [165]. One faithful friendprocured the escape of his wife and children from Athens to the courtof Admetus, for which offence of affection, a single historian,Stesimbrotus (whose statement even the credulous Plutarch questions,and proves to be contradictory with another assertion of the sameauthor), has recorded that he was condemned to death by Cimon. It isnot upon such dubious chronicles that we can suffer so great a stainon the character of a man singularly humane. [166]

X. As we have now for ever lost sight of Themistocles on the stage ofAthenian politics, the present is the most fitting opportunity toconclude the history of his wild and adventurous career.

Persecuted by the Spartans, abandoned by his countrymen, excluded fromthe whole of Greece, no refuge remained to the man who had crushed thepower of Persia, save the Persian court. The generous and high-spirited policy that characterized the oriental despotism towards itsfoes proffered him not only a safe, but a magnificent asylum. ThePersian monarchs were ever ready to welcome the exiles of Greece, andto conciliate those whom they had failed to conquer. It was the fateof Themistocles to be saved by the enemies of his country. He had noalternative. The very accusation of connivance with the Medes drovehim into their arms.

Under guidance of a Persian, Themistocles traversed the Asiaticcontinent; and ere he reached Susa, contrived to have a letter, thatmight prepare the way for him, delivered at the Persian court. Hisletter ran somewhat thus, if we may suppose that Thucydides preservedthe import, though he undoubtedly fashioned the style. [167]

"I, Themistocles, who of all the Greeks have inflicted the severestwounds upon your race, so long as I was called by fate to resist theinvasion of the Persians, now come to you." (He then urged, on theother hand, the services he had rendered to Xerxes in his messagesafter Salamis, relative to the breaking of the bridges, assuming acredit to which he was by no means entitled--and insisted that hisgenerosity demanded a return.) "Able" (he proceeded) "to perform greatservices--persecuted by the Greeks for my friendship for you--I amnear at hand. Grant me only a year's respite, that I may then apprizeyou in person of the object of my journey hither."

The bold and confident tone of Themistocles struck the imagination ofthe young king (Artaxerxes), and he returned a favourable reply.Themistocles consumed the year in the perfect acquisition of thelanguage, and the customs and manners of the country. He then soughtand obtained an audience. [168]

Able to converse with fluency, and without the medium of aninterpreter, his natural abilities found their level. He rose toinstant favour. Never before had a stranger been so honoured. He wasadmitted an easy access to the royal person--instructed in thelearning of the Magi--and when he quitted the court it was to takepossession of the government of three cities--Myus, celebrated for itsprovisions; Lampsacus, for its vineyards; and Magnesia, for therichness of the soil; so that, according to the spirit and phraseologyof oriental taxation, it was not unaptly said that they were awardedto him for meat, wine, and bread.

XI. Thus affluent and thus honoured, Themistocles passed at Magnesiathe remainder of his days--the time and method of his death uncertain;whether cut off by natural disease, or, as is otherwise related [169],by a fate than which fiction itself could have invented none moresuited to the consummation of his romantic and great career. It issaid that when afterward Egypt revolted, and that revolt was aided bythe Athenians; when the Grecian navy sailed as far as Cilicia andCyprus; and Cimon upheld, without a rival, the new sovereignty of theseas; when Artaxerxes resolved to oppose the growing power of a statewhich, from the defensive, had risen to the offending, power;Themistocles received a mandate to realize the vague promises he hadgiven, and to commence his operations against Greece (B. C. 449).Then (if with Plutarch we accept this version of his fate), neitherresentment against the people he had deemed ungrateful, nor hispresent pomp, nor the fear of life, could induce the lord of Magnesiato dishonour his past achievements [170], and demolish his immortaltrophies. Anxious only to die worthily--since to live as became himwas no longer possible--he solemnly sacrificed to the gods--took leaveof his friends, and finished his days by poison.

His monument long existed in the forum of Magnesia; but his bones aresaid by his own desire to have been borne back privately to Attica,and have rested in the beloved land that exiled him from her bosom.And this his last request seems touchingly to prove his loyalty toAthens, and to proclaim his pardon of her persecution. Certain it is,at least, that however honoured in Persia, he never perpetrated oneact against Greece; and that, if sullied by the suspicion of others,his fame was untarnished by himself. He died, according to Plutarch,in his sixty-fifth year, leaving many children, and transmitting hisname to a long posterity, who received from his memory the honoursthey could not have acquired for themselves.

XII. The character of Themistocles has already in these pagesunfolded itself--profound, yet tortuous in policy--vast in conception--subtle, patient, yet prompt in action; affable in manner, butboastful, ostentatious, and disdaining to conceal his consciousness ofmerit; not brilliant in accomplishment, yet master not more of theGreek wiles than the Attic wit; sufficiently eloquent, but greater indeeds than words, and penetrating, by an almost preternatural insight,at once the characters of men and the sequences of events.Incomparably the greatest of his own times, and certainly notsurpassed by those who came after him. Pisistratus, Cimon, Pericles,Aristides himself, were of noble and privileged birth. Themistocleswas the first, and, except Demosthenes, the greatest of those who rosefrom the ranks of the people, and he drew the people upward in hisrise. His fame was the creation of his genius only. "What other man"(to paraphrase the unusual eloquence of Diodorus) "could in the sametime have placed Greece at the head of nations, Athens at the head ofGreece, himself at the head of Athens?--in the most illustrious agethe most illustrious man. Conducting to war the citizens of a statein ruins, he defeated all the arms of Asia. He alone had the power tounite the most discordant materials, and to render danger itselfsalutary to his designs. Not more remarkable in war than peace--inthe one he saved the liberties of Greece, in the other he created theeminence of Athens."

After him, the light of the heroic age seems to glimmer and to fade,and even Pericles himself appears dwarfed and artificial beside thatmasculine and colossal intellect which broke into fragments the mightof Persia, and baffled with a vigorous ease the gloomy sagacity ofSparta. The statue of Themistocles, existent six hundred years afterhis decease, exhibited to his countrymen an aspect as heroical as hisdeeds. [171]

We return to Cimon

CHAPTER III.

Reduction of Naxos.--Actions off Cyprus.--Manners of Cimon.--Improvements in Athens.--Colony at the Nine Ways.--Siege of Thasos.--Earthquake in Sparta.--Revolt of Helots, Occupation of Ithome, andThird Messenian War.--Rise and Character of Pericles.--Prosecution andAcquittal of Cimon.--The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome.--Thasos Surrenders.--Breach between the Athenians and Spartans.--Constitutional Innovations at Athens.--Ostracism of Cimon.

I. At the time in which Naxos refused the stipulated subsidies, andwas, in consequence, besieged by Cimon, that island was one of themost wealthy and populous of the confederate states. For some timethe Naxians gallantly resisted the besiegers; but, at length reduced,they were subjected to heavier conditions than those previouslyimposed upon them. No conqueror contents himself with acquiring theobjects, sometimes frivolous and often just, with which he commenceshostilities. War inflames the passions, and success the ambition.Cimon, at first anxious to secure the Grecian, was now led on todesire the increase of the Athenian power. The Athenian fleet hadsubdued Naxos, and Naxos was rendered subject to Athens. This was thefirst of the free states which the growing republic submitted to heryoke [172]. The precedent once set, as occasion tempted, the restshared a similar fate.

II. The reduction of Naxos was but the commencement of the victoriesof Cimon. In Asia Minor there were many Grecian cities in which thePersian ascendency had never yet been shaken. Along the Carian coastCimon conducted his armament, and the terror it inspired sufficed toengage all the cities, originally Greek, to revolt from Persia; thosegarrisoned by Persians he besieged and reduced. Victorious in Caria,he passed with equal success into Lycia [173], augmenting his fleetand forces as he swept along. But the Persians, not inactive, had nowassembled a considerable force in Pamphylia, and lay encamped on thebanks of the Eurymedon (B. C. 466), whose waters, sufficiently wide,received their fleet. The expected re-enforcement of eightyPhoenician vessels from Cyprus induced the Persians to delay [174]actual hostilities. But Cimon, resolved to forestall the anticipatedjunction, sailed up the river, and soon forced the barbarian fleet,already much more numerous than his own, into active engagement. ThePersians but feebly supported the attack; driven up the river, thecrews deserted the ships, and hastened to join the army arrayed alongthe coast. Of the ships thus deserted, some were destroyed; and twohundred triremes, taken by Cimon, yet more augmented his armament.But the Persians, now advanced to the verge of the shore, presented along and formidable array, and Cimon, with some anxiety, saw thedanger he incurred in landing troops already much harassed by the lateaction, while a considerable proportion of the hostile forces, farmore numerous, were fresh and unfatigued. The spirit of the men, andtheir elation at the late victory, bore down the fears of the general;yet warm from the late action, he debarked his heavy-armed infantry,and with loud shouts the Athenians rushed upon the foe. The contestwas fierce--the slaughter great. Many of the noblest Athenians fellin the action. Victory at length declared in favour of Cimon; thePersians were put to flight, and the Greeks remained masters of thebattle and the booty--the last considerable. Thus, on the same day,the Athenians were victorious on both elements--an unprecedentedglory, which led the rhetorical Plutarch to declare--that Plataea andSalamis were outshone. Posterity, more discerning, estimates glorynot by the greatness of the victory alone, but the justice of thecause. And even a skirmish won by men struggling for liberty on theirown shores is more honoured than the proudest battle in which theconquerors are actuated by the desire of vengeance or the lust ofenterprise.

III. To the trophies of this double victory were soon added those ofa third, obtained over the eighty vessels of the Phoenicians off thecoast of Cyprus. These signal achievements spread the terror of theAthenian arms on remote as on Grecian shores. Without adopting theexaggerated accounts of injudicious authors as to the number of shipsand prisoners [175], it seems certain, at least, that the amount ofthe booty was sufficient, in some degree, to create in Athens a moralrevolution--swelling to a vast extent the fortunes of individuals, andaugmenting the general taste for pomp, for luxury, and for splendour,which soon afterward rendered Athens the most magnificent of theGrecian states.

The navy of Persia thus broken, her armies routed, the scene of actiontransferred to her own dominions, all designs against Greece were laidaside. Retreating, as it were, more to the centre of her vastdomains, she left the Asiatic outskirts to the solitude, rather ofexhaustion than of peace. "No troops," boasted the laterrhetoricians, "came within a day's journey, on horseback, of theGrecian seas." From the Chelidonian isles on the Pamphylian coast, tothose [176] twin rocks at the entrance of the Euxine, between whichthe sea, chafed by their rugged base, roars unappeasably through itsmists of foam, no Persian galley was descried. Whether this was thecause of defeat or of acknowledged articles of peace, has beendisputed. But, as will be seen hereafter, of the latter allhistorical evidence is wanting.

In a subsequent expedition, Cimon, sailing from Athens with a smallforce, wrested the Thracian Chersonese from the Persians--an exploitwhich restored to him his own patrimony.

IV. Cimon was now at the height of his fame and popularity. Hisshare of the booty, and the recovery of the Chersonese, rendered himby far the wealthiest citizen of Athens; and he continued to use hiswealth to cement his power. His intercourse with other nations, hisfamiliarity with the oriental polish and magnificence, served toelevate his manners from their early rudeness, and to give splendourto his tastes. If he had spent his youth among the wild soldiers ofMiltiades, the leisure of his maturer years was cultivated by anintercourse with sages and poets. His passion for the sex, which evenin its excesses tends to refine and to soften, made his only vice. Hewas the friend of every genius and every art; and, the link betweenthe lavish ostentation of Themistocles and the intellectual grace ofPericles, he conducted, as it were, the insensible transition from theage of warlike glory to that of civil pre-eminence. He may be said tohave contributed greatly to diffuse that atmosphere of poetry and ofpleasure which even the meanest of the free Athenians afterwarddelighted to respire. He led the citizens more and more from therecesses of private life; and carried out that social policy commencedby Pisistratus, according to which all individual habits became mergedinto one animated, complex, and excited public. Thus, himself gay andconvivial, addicted to company, wine, and women, he encouraged showsand spectacles, and invested them with new magnificence; heembellished the city with public buildings, and was the first to erectat Athens those long colonnades--beneath the shade of which, shelteredfrom the western suns, that graceful people were accustomed toassemble and converse. The Agora, that universal home of thecitizens, was planted by him with the oriental planes; and the grovesof Academe, the immortal haunt of Plato, were his work. Thatcelebrated garden, associated with the grateful and brightremembrances of all which poetry can lend to wisdom, was, before thetime of Cimon, a waste and uncultivated spot. It was his hand thatintersected it with walks and alleys, and that poured through itsgreen retreats the ornamental waters so refreshing in those climes,and not common in the dry Attic soil, which now meandered in livingstreams, and now sparkled into fountains. Besides these works toembellish, he formed others to fortify the city. He completed thecitadel, hitherto unguarded on the south side; and it was from thebarbarian spoils deposited in the treasury that the expenses offounding the Long Walls, afterward completed, were defrayed.

V. In his conduct towards the allies, the natural urbanity of Cimonserved to conceal a policy deep-laid and grasping. The other Atheniangenerals were stern and punctilious in their demands on theconfederates; they required the allotted number of men, and, indefault of the supply, increased the rigour of their exactions. Notso Cimon--from those whom the ordinary avocations of a peaceful liferendered averse to active service, he willingly accepted a pecuniarysubstitute, equivalent to the value of those ships or soldiers theyshould have furnished. These sums, devoted indeed to the generalservice, were yet appropriated to the uses of the Athenian navy; thusthe states, hitherto warlike, were artfully suffered to lapse intopeaceful and luxurious pursuits; and the confederates became at once,under the most lenient pretexts, enfeebled and impoverished by thevery means which strengthened the martial spirit and increased thefiscal resources of the Athenians. The tributaries found too late,when they ventured at revolt, that they had parted with the facilitiesof resistance. [177]

In the mean while it was the object of Cimon to sustain the navalardour and discipline of the Athenians; while the oar and the swordfell into disuse with the confederates, he kept the greater part ofthe citizens in constant rotation at maritime exercise or enterprise--until experience and increasing power with one, indolence and gradualsubjection with the other, destroying the ancient equality in arms,made the Athenians masters and their confederates subjects. [178]

VI. According to the wise policy of the ancients, the Athenians neverneglected a suitable opportunity to colonize; thus extending theirdominion while they draughted off the excess of their population, aswell as the more enterprising spirits whom adventure tempted orpoverty aroused. The conquest of Eion had opened to the Athenians anew prospect of aggrandizement, of which they were now prepared toseize the advantages. Not far from Eion, and on the banks of theStrymon, was a place called the Nine Ways, afterward Amphipolis, andwhich, from its locality and maritime conveniences, seemed especiallycalculated for the site of a new city. Thither ten thousand persons,some confederates, some Athenians, had been sent to establish acolony. The views of the Athenians were not, however, in thisenterprise, bounded to its mere legitimate advantages. About the sametime they carried on a dispute with the Thasians relative to certainmines and places of trade on the opposite coasts of Thrace. Thedispute was one of considerable nicety. The Athenians, havingconquered Eion and the adjacent territory, claimed the possession byright of conquest. The Thasians, on the other hand, had ancientlypossessed some of the mines and the monopoly of the commerce; they hadjoined in the confederacy; and, asserting that the conquest had beenmade, if by Athenian arms, for the federal good, they demanded thatthe ancient privileges should revert to them. The Athenian governmentwas not disposed to surrender a claim which proffered to avarice thetemptation of mines of gold. The Thasians renounced the confederacy,and thus gave to the Athenians the very pretext for hostilities whichthe weaker state should never permit to the more strong. While thecolony proceeded to its destination, part of the Athenian fleet, underCimon, sailed to Thasos--gained a victory by sea--landed on theisland--and besieged the city.

Meanwhile the new colonizers had become masters of the Nine Ways,having dislodged the Edonian Thracians, its previous habitants. Buthostility following hostility, the colonists were eventually utterlyrouted and cut off in a pitched battle at Drabescus (B. C. 465), inEdonia, by the united forces of all the neighbouring Thracians.

VII. The siege of Thasos still continued, and the besieged took theprecaution to send to Sparta for assistance. That sullen state hadlong viewed with indignation the power of Athens; her younger warriorsclamoured against the inert indifference with which a city, for agesso inferior to Sparta, had been suffered to gain the ascendency overGreece. In vain had Themistocles been removed; the inexhaustiblegenius of the people had created a second Themistocles in Cimon. TheLacedaemonians, glad of a pretext for quarrel, courteously receivedthe Thasian ambassadors, and promised to distract the Athenian forcesby an irruption into Attica. They were actively prepared inconcerting measures for this invasion, when sudden and complicatedafflictions, now to be related, forced them to abandon their designs,and confine their attention to themselves.

VIII. An earthquake, unprecedented in its violence, occurred inSparta. In many places throughout Laconia the rocky soil was rentasunder. From Mount Taygetus, which overhung the city, and on whichthe women of Lacedaemon were wont to hold their bacchanalian orgies,huge fragments rolled into the suburbs. The greater portion of thecity was absolutely overthrown; and it is said, probably withexaggeration, that only five houses wholly escaped the shock. Thisterrible calamity did not cease suddenly as it came; its concussionswere repeated; it buried alike men and treasure: could we creditDiodorus, no less than twenty thousand persons perished in the shock.Thus depopulated, empoverished, and distressed, the enemies whom thecruelty of Sparta nursed within her bosom resolved to seize the momentto execute their vengeance and consummate her destruction. UnderPausanias we have seen before that the helots were already ripe forrevolt. The death of that fierce conspirator checked, but did notcrush, their designs of freedom. Now was the moment, when Sparta layin ruins--now was the moment to realize their dreams. From field tofield, from village to village, the news of the earthquake became thewatchword of revolt. Up rose the helots (B. C. 464)--they armedthemselves, they poured on--a wild, and gathering, and relentlessmultitude, resolved to slay by the wrath of man all whom that ofnature had yet spared. The earthquake that levelled Sparta rent herchains; nor did the shock create one chasm so dark and wide as thatbetween the master and the slave.

It is one of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history--thatcity in ruins--the earth still trembling--the grim and dauntlesssoldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in such a time,and such a scene, the multitude sensible, not of danger, but of wrong,and rising, not to succour, but to revenge: all that should havedisarmed a feebler enmity, giving fire to theirs; the dreadestcalamity their blessing--dismay their hope it was as if the GreatMother herself had summoned her children to vindicate the long-abused,the all inalienable heritage derived from her; and the stir of theangry elements was but the announcement of an armed and solemn unionbetween nature and the oppressed.

IX. Fortunately for Sparta, the danger was not altogether unforeseen.After the confusion and horror of the earthquake, and while thepeople, dispersed, were seeking to save their effects, Archidamus,who, four years before, had succeeded to the throne of Lacedaemon,ordered the trumpets to sound as to arms. That wonderful superiorityof man over matter which habit and discipline can effect, and whichwas ever so visible among the Spartans, constituted their safety atthat hour. Forsaking the care of their property, the Spartans seizedtheir arms, flocked around their king, and drew up in disciplinedarray. In her most imminent crisis, Sparta was thus saved. Thehelots approached, wild, disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intentonly to plunder and to slay; they expected to find scattered andaffrighted foes--they found a formidable army; their tyrants werestill their lords. They saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselvesover the country--exciting all they met to rebellion, and soon, joinedwith the Messenians, kindred to them by blood and ancientreminiscences of heroic struggles, they seized that same Ithome whichtheir hereditary Aristodemus had before occupied with unforgottenvalour. This they fortified; and, occupying also the neighbouringlands, declared open war upon their lords. As the Messenians were themore worthy enemy, so the general insurrection is known by the name ofthe Third Messenian War.

X. While these events occurred in Sparta, Cimon, intrusting to othersthe continued siege of Thasos, had returned to Athens [179]. He foundhis popularity already shaken, and his power endangered. Thedemocratic party had of late regained the influence it had lost on theexile of Themistocles. Pericles, son of Xanthippus (the accuser ofMiltiades), had, during the last six years, insensibly risen intoreputation: the house of Miltiades was fated to bow before the race ofXanthippus, and hereditary opposition ended in the old hereditaryresults. Born of one of the loftiest families of Athens,distinguished by the fame as the fortunes of his father, who had beenlinked with Aristides in command of the Athenian fleet, and in whosename had been achieved the victory of Mycale, the young Pericles foundbetimes an easy opening to his brilliant genius and his high ambition.He had nothing to contend against but his own advantages. The beautyof his countenance, the sweetness of his voice, and the blandness ofhis address, reminded the oldest citizens of Pisistratus; and thisresemblance is said to have excited against him a popular jealousywhich he found it difficult to surmount. His youth was passedalternately in the camp and in the schools. He is the first of thegreat statesmen of his country who appears to have prepared himselffor action by study; Anaxagoras, Pythoclides, and Damon were histutors, and he was early eminent in all the lettered accomplishmentsof his time. By degrees, accustoming the people to his appearance inpublic life, he became remarkable for an elaborate and impassionedeloquence, hitherto unknown. With his intellectual and meditativetemperament all was science; his ardour in action regulated by longforethought, his very words by deliberate preparation. Till his time,oratory, in its proper sense, as a study and an art, was uncultivatedin Athens. Pisistratus is said to have been naturally eloquent, andthe vigorous mind of Themistocles imparted at once persuasion andforce to his counsels. But Pericles, aware of all the advantages tobe gained by words, embellished words with every artifice that hisimagination could suggest. His speeches were often writtencompositions, and the novel dazzle of their diction, and thatconsecutive logic which preparation alone can impart to language,became irresistible to a people that had itself become a Pericles.Universal civilization, universal poetry, had rendered the audiencesusceptible and fastidious; they could appreciate the ornate andphilosophical harangues of Pericles; and, the first to mirror tothemselves the intellectual improvements they had made, the first torepresent the grace and enlightenment, as Themistocles had been thefirst to represent the daring and enterprise, of his time, the son ofXanthippus began already to eclipse that very Cimon whose qualitiesprepared the way for him.

XI. We must not suppose, that in the contests between thearistocratic and popular parties, the aristocracy were always on oneside. Such a division is never to be seen in free constitutions.There is always a sufficient party of the nobles whom conviction,ambition, or hereditary predilections will place at the head of thepopular movement; and it is by members of the privileged order thatthe order itself is weakened. Athens in this respect, therefore,resembled England, and as now in the latter state, so then at Athens,it was often the proudest, the wealthiest, the most high-born of thearistocrats that gave dignity and success to the progress ofdemocratic opinion. There, too, the vehemence of party frequentlyrendered politics an hereditary heirloom; intermarriages kept togethermen of similar factions; and the memory of those who had been themartyrs or the heroes of a cause mingled with the creed of theirdescendants. Thus, it was as natural that one of the race of thatClisthenes who had expelled the Pisistratides, and popularized theconstitution, should embrace the more liberal side, as that a Russellshould follow out in one age the principles for which his ancestorperished in another. So do our forefathers become sponsors forourselves. The mother of Pericles was the descendant of Clisthenes;and though Xanthippus himself was of the same party as Aristides, wemay doubt, by his prosecution of Miltiades as well as by his connexionwith the Alcmaeonids, whether he ever cordially co-operated with theviews and the ambition of Cimon. However this be, his brilliant soncast himself at once into the arms of the more popular faction, andopposed with all his energy the aristocratic predilections of Cimon.Not yet, however, able to assume the lead to which he aspired (for ithad now become a matter of time as well as intellect to rise), heranged himself under Ephialtes, a personage of whom history gives ustoo scanty details, although he enjoyed considerable influence,increased by his avowed jealousy of the Spartans and his ownunimpeachable integrity.

XII. It is noticeable, that men who become the leaders of the public,less by the spur of passion than by previous study and conscioustalent--men whom thought and letters prepare for enterprise--arerarely eager to advance themselves too soon. Making politics ascience, they are even fastidiously alive to the qualities and theexperience demanded for great success; their very self-esteem rendersthem seemingly modest; they rely upon time and upon occasion; and,pushed forward rather by circumstance than their own exertions, it islong before their ambition and their resources are fully developed.Despite all his advantages, the rise of Pericles was gradual.

On the return of Cimon the popular party deemed itself sufficientlystrong to manifest its opposition. The expedition to Thasos had notbeen attended with results so glorious as to satisfy a people pamperedby a series of triumphs. Cimon was deemed culpable for not havingtaken advantage of the access into Macedonia, and added that countryto the Athenian empire. He was even suspected and accused ofreceiving bribes from Alexander, the king of Macedon. Pericles [180]is said to have taken at first an active part in this prosecution; butwhen the cause came on, whether moved by the instances of Cimon'ssister, or made aware of the injustice of the accusation, he conductedhimself favourably towards the accused. Cimon himself treated thecharges with a calm disdain; the result was worthy of Athens andhimself. He was honourably acquitted.

XIII. Scarce was this impeachment over, when a Spartan ambassadorarrived at Athens to implore her assistance against the helots; therequest produced a vehement discussion.

Ephialtes strongly opposed the proposition to assist a city, sometimesopenly, always heartily, inimical to Athens. "Much better," hecontended, "to suffer her pride to be humbled, and her powers ofmischief to be impaired." Ever supporting and supported by theLacedaemonian party, whether at home or abroad, Cimon, on the otherhand, maintained the necessity of marching to the relief of Sparta."Do not," he said, almost sublimely--and his words are reported tohave produced a considerable impression on that susceptible assembly--"do not suffer Greece to be mutilated, nor deprive Athens of hercompanion!"

The more generous and magnanimous counsel prevailed with a generousand magnanimous people; and Cimon was sent to the aid of Sparta at thehead of a sufficient force. It may be observed, as a sign of thepolitical morality of the time, that the wrongs of the helots appearto have been forgotten. But such is the curse of slavery, that itunfits its victims to be free, except by preparations and degrees.And civilization, humanity, and social order are often enlisted on thewrong side, in behalf of the oppressors, from the license andbarbarity natural to the victories of the oppressed. A conflictbetween the negroes and the planters in modern times may not beunanalogous to that of the helots and Spartans; and it is often afatal necessity to extirpate the very men we have maddened, by our owncruelties, to the savageness of beasts.

It would appear that, during the revolt of the helots and Messenians,which lasted ten years, the Athenians, under Cimon, marched twice[181] to the aid of the Spartans. In the first (B. C. 464) theyprobably drove the scattered insurgents into the city of Ithome; inthe second (B. C. 461) they besieged the city. In the interval Thasossurrendered (B. C. 463); the inhabitants were compelled to level theirwalls, to give up their shipping, to pay the arrear of tribute, todefray the impost punctually in future, and to resign all claims onthe continent and the mines.

XIV. Thus did the Athenians establish their footing on the Thraciancontinent, and obtain the possession of the golden mines, which theymistook for wealth. In the second expedition of the Athenians, thelong-cherished jealousy between themselves and the Spartans could nolonger be smothered. The former were applied to especially from theirskill in sieges, and their very science galled perhaps the pride ofthe martial Spartans. While, as the true art of war was still solittle understood, that even the Athenians were unable to carry thetown by assault, and compelled to submit to the tedious operations ofa blockade, there was ample leisure for those feuds which theuncongenial habits and long rivalry of the nations necessarilyproduced. Proud of their Dorian name, the Spartans looked on theIonic race of Athens as aliens. Severe in their oligarchicdiscipline, they regarded the Athenian Demus as innovators; and, inthe valour itself of their allies, they detected a daring and restlessenergy which, if serviceable now, might easily be rendered dangeroushereafter. They even suspected the Athenians of tampering with thehelots--led, it may be, to that distrust by the contrast, which theywere likely to misinterpret, between their own severity and theAthenian mildness towards the servile part of their severalpopulations, and also by the existence of a powerful party at Athens,which had opposed the assistance Cimon afforded. With their usualtranquil and wary policy, the Spartan government attempted to concealtheir real fears, and simply alleging they had no further need oftheir assistance, dismissed the Athenians. But that people,constitutionally irritable, perceiving that, despite this hollowpretext, the other allies, including the obnoxious Aeginetans, wereretained, received their dismissal as an insult. Thinking justly thatthey had merited a nobler confidence from the Spartans, they gave wayto their first resentment, and disregarding the league existing yetbetween themselves and Sparta against the Mede--the form of which hadsurvived the spirit--they entered into an alliance with the Argives,hereditary enemies of Sparta, and in that alliance the Aleuads ofThessaly were included.

XV. The obtaining of these decrees by the popular party was theprelude to the fall of Cimon. The talents of that great man were farmore eminent in war than peace; and despite his real or affectedliberality of demeanour, he wanted either the faculty to suit thetime, or the art to conceal his deficiencies. Raised to eminence bySpartan favour, he had ever too boldly and too imprudently espousedthe Spartan cause. At first, when the Athenians obtained their navalascendency--and it was necessary to conciliate Sparta--the partialitywith which Cimon was regarded by that state was his recommendation;now when, no longer to be conciliated, Sparta was to be dreaded andopposed, it became his ruin. It had long been his custom to laud theSpartans at the expense of the Athenians, and to hold out theirmanners as an example to the admiration of his countrymen. It was afavourite mode of reproof with him--"The Spartans would not have donethis." It was even remembered against him that he had called his sonLacedaemonius. These predilections had of late rankled in the popularmind; and now, when the Athenian force had been contumeliouslydismissed, it was impossible to forget that Cimon had obtained thedecree of the relief, and that the mortification which resulted fromit was the effect of his counsels.

Public spirit ran high against the Spartans, and at the head of theSpartan faction in Athens stood Cimon.

XVI. But at this time, other events, still more intimately connectedwith the Athenian politics, conspired to weaken the authority of thisable general. Those constitutional reforms, which are in realityrevolutions under a milder name, were now sweeping away the lastwrecks of whatever of the old aristocratic system was still left tothe Athenian commonwealth.

We have seen that the democratic party had increased in power by thedecree of Aristides, which opened all offices to all ranks. This, asyet, was productive less of actual than of moral effects. The liberalopinions possessed by a part of the aristocracy, and the legitimateinfluence which in all countries belongs to property and high descent(greatest, indeed, where the countries are most free)--secured, as ageneral rule, the principal situations in the state to rank andwealth. But the moral effect of the decree was to elevate the lowerclasses with a sense of their own power and dignity, and every victoryachieved over a foreign foe gave new authority to the people whosevoices elected the leader--whose right arms won the battle.

The constitution previous to Solon was an oligarchy of birth. Solonrendered it an aristocracy of property. Clisthenes widened its basisfrom property to population; as we have already seen, it was, in allprobability, Clisthenes also who weakened the more illicit andoppressive influences of wealth, by establishing the ballot or secretsuffrage instead of the open voting, which was common in the time ofSolon. It is the necessary constitution of society, that when oneclass obtains power, the ancient checks to that power requireremodelling. The Areopagus was designed by Solon as the aristocraticbalance to the popular assembly. But in all states in which thepeople and the aristocracy are represented, the great blow to thearistocratic senate is given, less by altering its own constitutionthan by infusing new elements of democracy into the popular assembly.The old boundaries are swept away, not by the levelling of the bank,but by the swelling of the torrent. The checks upon democracy oughtto be so far concealed as to be placed in the representation of thedemocracy itself; for checks upon its progress from without are but asfortresses to be stormed; and what, when latent, was the influence ofa friend, when apparent, is the resistance of a foe.

The Areopagus, the constitutional bulwark of the aristocratic party ofAthens, became more and more invidious to the people. And now, whenCimon resisted every innovation on that assembly, he only ensured hisown destruction, while he expedited the policy he denounced.Ephialtes directed all the force of the popular opinion against thisvenerable senate; and at length, though not openly assisted byPericles [182], who took no prominent part in the contention, thatinfluential statesman succeeded in crippling its functions andlimiting its authority.

XVII. I do not propose to plunge the reader into the voluminous andunprofitable controversy on the exact nature of the innovations ofEphialtes which has agitated the students of Germany. It appears tome most probable that the Areopagus retained the right of adjudgingcases of homicide [183], and little besides of its ancientconstitutional authority, that it lost altogether its most dangerouspower in the indefinite police it had formerly exercised over thehabits and morals of the people, that any control of the finances waswisely transferred to the popular senate [184], that its irresponsiblecharacter was abolished, and it was henceforth rendered accountable tothe people. Such alterations were not made without exciting the deepindignation of the aristocratic faction.

In all state reforms a great and comprehensive mind does not so muchconsider whether each reform is just, as what will be the ultimateascendency given to particular principles. Cimon preferred to allconstitutions a limited aristocracy, and his practical experienceregarded every measure in its general tendency towards or against thesystem which he honestly advocated.

XVIII. The struggle between the contending parties and principles hadcommenced before Cimon's expedition to Ithome; the mortificationconnected with that event, in weakening Cimon, weakened thearistocracy itself. Still his fall was not immediate [185], nor didit take place as a single and isolated event, but as one of thenecessary consequences of the great political change effected byEphialtes. All circumstances, however, conspired to place the son ofMiltiades in a situation which justified the suspicion and jealousy ofthe Athenians. Of all the enemies, how powerful soever, that Athenscould provoke, none were so dangerous as Lacedaemon.

Dark, wily, and implacable, the rugged queen of the Peloponnesusreared her youth in no other accomplishments than those of stratagemand slaughter. Her enmity against Athens was no longer smothered.Athens had everything to fear, not less from her influence than herarmies. It was not, indeed, so much from the unsheathed sword as fromthe secret councils of Sparta that danger was to be apprehended. Itcannot be too often remembered, that among a great portion of theAthenian aristocracy, the Spartan government maintained a considerableand sympathetic intelligence. That government ever sought to adaptand mould all popular constitutions to her own oligarchic model; andwhere she could not openly invade, she secretly sought to undermine,the liberties of her neighbours. Thus, in addition to all fear froman enemy in the field, the Athenian democracy were constantly excitedto suspicion against a spy within the city: always struggling with anaristocratic party, which aimed at regaining the power it had lost,there was just reason to apprehend that that party would seize anyoccasion to encroach upon the popular institutions; every feud withSparta consequently seemed to the Athenian people, nor without cause,to subject to intrigue and conspiracy their civil freedom; and (asalways happens with foreign interference, whether latent or avowed)exasperated whatever jealousies already existed against those forwhose political interests the interference was exerted. Bearing thisin mind, we shall see no cause to wonder at the vehement opposition towhich Cimon was now subjected. We are driven ourselves to searchdeeply into the causes which led to his prosecution, as to that ofother eminent men in Athens, from want of clear and precise historicaldetails. Plutarch, to whom, in this instance, we are compelledchiefly to resort, is a most equivocal authority. Like mostbiographers, his care is to exalt his hero, though at the expense ofthat hero's countrymen; and though an amiable writer, nor without somesemi-philosophical views in morals, his mind was singularly deficientin grasp and in comprehension. He never penetrates the subtle causesof effects. He surveys the past, sometimes as a scholar, sometimes asa taleteller, sometimes even as a poet, but never as a statesman.Thus, we learn from him little of the true reasons for the ostracism,either of Aristides, of Themistocles, or of Cimon--points nowintricate, but which might then, alas! have been easily cleared up bya profound inquirer, to the acquittal alike of themselves and of theirjudges. To the natural deficiencies of Plutarch we must add his partypredilections. He was opposed to democratic opinions--and thatobjection, slight in itself, or it might be urged against many of thebest historians and the wisest thinkers, is rendered weighty in thathe was unable to see, that in all human constitutions perfection isimpossible, that we must take the evil with the good, and that what heimputes to one form of government is equally attributable to another.For in what monarchy, what oligarchy, have not great men beenmisunderstood, and great merits exposed to envy!

Thus, in the life of Cimon, Plutarch says that it was "on a slightpretext" [186] that that leader of the Spartan party in Athens wassubjected to the ostracism. We have seen enough to convince us that,whatever the pretext, the reasons, at least, were grave and solid--that they were nothing short of Cimon's unvarying ardour for, andconstant association with, the principles and the government of thatstate most inimical to Athens, and the suspicious policy of which was,in all times--at that time especially--fraught with danger to herpower, her peace, and her institutions. Could we penetrate fartherinto the politics of the period, we might justify the Athenians yetmore. Without calling into question the integrity and the patriotismof Cimon, without supposing that he would have entered into anyintrigue against the Athenian independence of foreign powers--asupposition his subsequent conduct effectually refutes--he might, as asincere and warm partisan of the nobles, and a resolute opposer of thepopular party, have sought to restore at home the aristocratic balanceof power, by whatever means his great rank, and influence, andconnexion with the Lacedaemonian party could afford him. We are told,at least, that he not only opposed all the advances of the moreliberal party--that he not only stood resolutely by the interests anddignities of the Areopagus, which had ceased to harmonize with themore modern institutions, but that he expressly sought to restorecertain prerogatives which that assembly had formally lost during hisforeign expeditions, and that he earnestly endeavoured to bring backthe whole constitution to the more aristocratic government establishedby Clisthenes. It is one thing to preserve, it is another to restore.A people may be deluded under popular pretexts out of the rights theyhave newly acquired, but they never submit to be openly despoiled ofthem. Nor can we call that ingratitude which is but the refusal tosurrender to the merits of an individual the acquisitions of a nation.

All things considered, then, I believe, that if ever ostracism wasjustifiable, it was so in the case of Cimon--nay, it was perhapsabsolutely essential to the preservation of the constitution. Hisvery honesty made him resolute in his attempts against thatconstitution. His talents, his rank, his fame, his services, onlyrendered those attempts more dangerous.

XIX. Could the reader be induced to view, with an examination equallydispassionate, the several ostracisms of Aristides and Themistocles,he might see equal causes of justification, both in the motives and inthe results. The first was absolutely necessary for the defeat of thearistocratic party, and the removal of restrictions on those energieswhich instantly found the most glorious vents for action; the secondwas justified by a similar necessity that produced similar effects.To impartial eyes a people may be vindicated without traducing thosewhom a people are driven to oppose. In such august and complicatedtrials the accuser and defendant may be both innocent.

CHAPTER IV.

War between Megara and Corinth.--Megara and Pegae garrisoned byAthenians.--Review of Affairs at the Persian Court.--Accession ofArtaxerxes.--Revolt of Egypt under Inarus.--Athenian Expedition toassist Inarus.--Aegina besieged.--The Corinthians defeated.--SpartanConspiracy with the Athenian Oligarchy.--Battle of Tanagra.--Campaignand Successes of Myronides.--Plot of the Oligarchy against theRepublic.--Recall of Cimon.--Long Walls completed.--Aegina reduced.--Expedition under Tolmides.--Ithome surrenders.--The Insurgents aresettled at Naupactus.--Disastrous Termination of the EgyptianExpedition.--The Athenians march into Thessaly to restore Orestes theTagus.--Campaign under Pericles.--Truce of five Years with thePeloponnesians.--Cimon sets sail for Cyprus.--Pretended Treaty ofPeace with Persia.--Death of Cimon.

I. Cimon, summoned to the ostracism, was sentenced to its appointedterm of banishment--ten years. By his removal, the situation ofPericles became suddenly more prominent and marked, and he mingledwith greater confidence and boldness in public affairs. The vigour ofthe new administration was soon manifest. Megara had hitherto beenfaithful to the Lacedaemonian alliance--a dispute relative to thesettlement of frontiers broke out between that state and Corinth.Although the Corinthian government, liberal and enlightened, was oftenopposed to the Spartan oligarchy, it was still essential to theinterest of both those Peloponnesian states to maintain a firm generalalliance, and to keep the Peloponnesian confederacy as acounterbalance to the restless ambition of the new head of the Ionianleague. Sparta could not, therefore, have been slow in preferring thealliance of Corinth to that of Megara. On the other hand, Megara, nowpossessed of a democratic constitution, had long since abandoned theDorian character and habits. The situation of its territories, thenature of its institutions, alike pointed to Athens as its legitimateally. Thus, when the war broke out between Megara and Corinth, on theside of the latter appeared Sparta, while Megara naturally sought theassistance of Athens. The Athenian government eagerly availed itselfof the occasion to increase the power which Athens was now rapidlyextending over Greece. If we cast our eyes along the map of Greece,we shall perceive that the occupation of Megara proffered peculiaradvantages. It became at once a strong and formidable fortressagainst any incursions from the Peloponnesus, while its seaports ofNisaea and Pegae opened new fields, both of ambition and of commerce,alike on the Saronic and the Gulf of Corinth. The Athenians seizedwillingly on the alliance thus offered to them, and the Megarians hadthe weakness to yield both Megara and Pegae to Athenian garrisons,while the Athenians fortified their position by long walls that unitedMegara with its harbour at Nisaea.

II. A new and more vast enterprise contributed towards the stabilityof the government by draining off its bolder spirits, and divertingthe popular attention from domestic to foreign affairs.

It is necessary to pass before us, in brief review, the vicissitudesof the Persian court. In republican Greece, the history of the peoplemarches side by side with the biography of great men. In despoticPersia, all history dies away in the dark recesses and sanguinarymurthers of a palace governed by eunuchs and defended but by slaves.

In the year 465 B. C. the reign of the unfortunate Xerxes drew to itsclose. On his return to Susa, after the disastrous results of thePersian invasion, he had surrendered himself to the indolent luxury ofa palace. An able and daring traitor, named Artabanus [187], but whoseems to have been a different personage from that Artabanus whosesagacity had vainly sought to save the armies of Xerxes from theexpedition to Greece, entered into a conspiracy against the feeblemonarch. By the connivance of a eunuch, he penetrated at night thechamber of the king--and the gloomy destinies of Xerxes wereconsummated by assassination. Artabanus sought to throw the guiltupon Darius, the eldest son of the murdered king; and Artaxerxes, theyounger brother, seems to have connived at a charge which might renderhimself the lawful heir to the throne. Darius accordingly perished bythe same fate as his father. The extreme youth of Artaxerxes hadinduced Artabanus to believe that but a slender and insecure life nowstood between himself and the throne; but the young prince was alreadymaster of the royal art of dissimulation: he watched his opportunity--and by a counter-revolution Artabanus was sacrificed to the manes ofhis victims. [188]

Thus Artaxerxes obtained the undisturbed possession of the Persianthrone (B. C. 464). The new monarch appears to have derived fromnature a stronger intellect than his father. But the abuses, so rapidand rank of growth in Eastern despotisms, which now ate away thestrength of the Persian monarchy, were already, perhaps, past thepossibility of reform. The enormous extent of the ill-regulatedempire tempted the ambition of chiefs who might have plausibly hoped,that as the Persian masters had now degenerated to the effeminacy ofthe Assyrians they had supplanted, so the enterprise of a second Cyrusmight be crowned by a similar success.

Egypt had been rather overrun by Xerxes than subdued--and the spiritof its ancient people waited only the occasion of revolt. A Libyanprince, of the name of Inarus, whose territories bordered Egypt,entered that country (B. C. 460), and was hailed by the greater partof the population as a deliverer. The recent murder of Xerxes--theweakness of a new reign, commenced in so sanguinary a manner, appearedto favour their desire of independence; and the African adventurerbeheld himself at the head of a considerable force. Having alreadysecured foreign subsidiaries, Inarus was anxious yet more tostrengthen himself abroad; and more than one ambassador was despatchedto Athens, soliciting her assistance, and proffering, in return, ashare in the government for whose establishment her arms weresolicited: a singular fatality, that the petty colony which, if webelieve tradition, had so many centuries ago settled in the thenobscure corners of Attica, should now be chosen the main auxiliary ofthe parent state in her vital struggles for national independence.

III. In acceding to the propositions of Inarus, Pericles yielded toconsiderations wholly contrary to his after policy, which made it aprincipal object to confine the energies of Athens within the limitsof Greece. It is probable that that penetrating and scientificstatesman (if indeed he had yet attained to a position which enabledhim to follow out his own conceptions) saw that every new governmentmust dazzle either by great enterprises abroad or great changes athome--and that he preferred the former. There are few sacrifices thata wary minister, newly-established, from whom high hopes areentertained, and who can justify the destruction of a rival party onlyby the splendour of its successor--will not hazard rather than incurthe contempt which follows disappointment. He will do something thatis dangerous rather than do nothing that is brilliant.

Neither the hatred nor the fear of Persia was at an end in Athens; andto carry war into the heart of her empire was a proposition eagerlyhailed. The more democratic and turbulent portion of the populace,viz., the seamen, had already been disposed of in an expedition of twohundred triremes against Cyprus. But the distant and magnificententerprise of Egypt--the hope of new empire--the lust of undiscoveredtreasures--were more alluring than the reduction of Cyprus. Thatisland was abandoned, and the fleet, composed both of Athenian andconfederate ships, sailed up the Nile. Masters of that river, theAthenians advanced to Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt. Theystormed and took two of the divisions of that city; the third, calledthe White Castle (occupied by the Medes, the Persians, and such of theEgyptians as had not joined the revolt), resisted their assault.

IV. While thus occupied in Egypt, the Athenian arms were equallyemployed in Greece. The whole forces of the commonwealth were indemand--war on every side. The alliance with Megara not only createdan enemy in Corinth, but the Peloponnesian confederacy became involvedwith the Attic: Lacedaemon herself, yet inert, but menacing; while theneighbouring Aegina, intent and jealous, prepared for hostilities soonmanifest.

The Athenians forestalled the attack--made a descent on Haliae, inArgolis--were met by the Corinthians and Epidaurians, and the resultof battle was the victory of the latter. This defeat the Atheniansspeedily retrieved at sea. Off Cecryphalea, in the Saronic gulf, theyattacked and utterly routed the Peloponnesian fleet. And now Aeginaopenly declared war and joined the hostile league. An importantbattle was fought by these two maritime powers with the confederatesof either side. The Athenians were victorious--took seventy ships--and, pushing the advantage they had obtained, landed in Aegina andbesieged her city. Three hundred heavy-armed Peloponnesians weredespatched to the relief of Aegina; while the Corinthians invaded theMegarian territory, seized the passes of Geranea, and advanced toMegara with their allies. Never was occasion more propitious. Solarge a force in Egypt, so large a force at Aegina--how was itpossible for the Athenians to march to the aid of Megara? Theyappeared limited to the choice either to abandon Megara or to raisethe siege of Aegina: so reasoned the Peloponnesians. But theadvantage of a constitution widely popular is, that the wholecommunity become soldiers in time of need. Myronides, an Athenian ofgreat military genius, not unassisted by Pericles, whose splendidqualities now daily developed themselves, was well adapted to givedirection to the enthusiasm of the people. Not a man was called fromAegina. The whole regular force disposed of, there yet remained atAthens those too aged and those too young for the ordinary service.Under Myronides, boys and old men marched at once to the assistance oftheir Megarian ally. A battle ensued; both sides retiring, neitherconsidered itself defeated. But the Corinthians retreating toCorinth, the Athenians erected a trophy on the field. The Corinthiangovernment received its troops with reproaches, and, after an intervalof twelve days, the latter returned to the scene of contest, andasserting their claim to the victory, erected a trophy of their own.During the work the Athenians sallied from Megara, where they hadensconced themselves, attacked and put to flight the Corinthians; anda considerable portion of the enemy turning into ground belonging to aprivate individual, became entangled in a large pit or ditch, fromwhich was but one outlet, viz., that by which they had entered. Atthis passage the Athenians stationed their heavy-armed troops, whilethe light-armed soldiers surrounded the ditch, and with the missilesof darts and stones put the enemy to death. The rest (being thegreater part) of the Corinthian forces effected a safe butdishonourable retreat.

V. This victory effected and Megara secured--although Aegina stillheld out, and although the fate of the Egyptian expedition was stillunknown--the wonderful activity of the government commenced what evenin times of tranquillity would have been a great and arduousachievement. To unite their city with its seaports, they set to workat the erection of the long walls, which extended from Athens both toPhalerus and Piraeus. Under Cimon, preparations already had been madefor the undertaking, and the spoils of Persia now provided the meansfor the defence of Athens.

Meanwhile, the Spartans still continued at the siege of Ithome. Wemust not imagine that all the helots had joined in the revolt. This,indeed, would be almost to suppose the utter disorganization of theSpartan state. The most luxurious subjects of a despotism were nevermore utterly impotent in procuring for themselves the necessaries oflife, than were the hardy and abstemious freemen of the Dorian Sparta.It was dishonour for a Spartan to till the land--to exercise a trade.He had all the prejudices against any calling but that of arms whichcharacterized a noble of the middle ages.

As is ever the case in the rebellion of slaves, the rise was notuniversal; a sufficient number of these wretched dependants remainedpassive and inert to satisfy the ordinary wants of their masters, andto assist in the rebuilding of the town. Still the Spartans weregreatly enfeebled, crippled, and embarrassed by the loss of the rest:and the siege of Ithome sufficed to absorb their attention, and tomake them regard without open hostilities, if with secret enmity, theoperations of the Athenians. The Spartan alliance formally dissolved--Megara, with its command of the Peloponnesus seized--the Doric cityof Corinth humbled and defeated--Aegina blockaded; all these--theAthenian proceedings--the Spartans bore without any formal declarationof war.

VI. And now, in the eighth year of the Messenian war, piety succeededwhere pride and revenge had failed, and the Spartans permitted otherobjects to divide their attention with the siege of Ithome. It wasone of the finest characteristics of that singular people, theirveneration for antiquity. For the little, rocky, and obscureterritory of Doris, whence tradition derived their origin, they feltthe affection and reverence of sons. A quarrel arising between thepeople of this state and the neighbouring Phocians, the latter invadedDoris, and captured one of its three towns [189]. The Lacedaemoniansmarched at once to the assistance of their reputed father-land, withan army of no less than fifteen hundred heavy-armed Spartans and tenthousand of their Peloponnesian allies [190], under the command ofNicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, and guardian of their king Pleistoanax,still a minor. They forced the Phocians to abandon the town they hadtaken; and having effectually protected Doris by a treaty of peacebetween the two nations, prepared to return home. But in this theywere much perplexed; the pass of Geranea was now occupied by theAthenians: Megara, too, and Pegae were in their hands. Should theypass by sea through the Gulf of Crissa, an Athenian squadron alreadyoccupied that passage. Either way they were intercepted [191]. Underall circumstances, they resolved to halt a while in Boeotia, and watchan opportunity to effect their return. But with these ostensiblemotives for that sojourn assigned by Thucydides, there was anothermore deep and latent. We have had constant occasion to remark howsingularly it was the Spartan policy to plot against the constitutionof free states, and how well-founded was the Athenian jealousy of thesecret interference of the Grecian Venice.

Halting now in Boeotia, Nicomedes entered into a clandestinecommunication with certain of the oligarchic party in Athens, theobject of the latter being the overthrow of the existent popularconstitution. With this object was certainly linked the recall ofCimon, though there is no reason to believe that great general a partyin the treason. This conspiracy was one main reason of the halt inBoeotia. Another was, probably, the conception of a great and politicdesign, glanced at only by historians, but which, if successful, wouldhave ranked among the masterpieces of Spartan statesmanship. Thisdesign was--while Athens was to be weakened by internal divisions, andher national spirit effectually curbed by the creation of anoligarchy, the tool of Sparta--to erect a new rival to Athens in theBoeotian Thebes. It is true that this project was not, according toDiodorus, openly apparent until after the battle of Tanagra. But sucha scheme required preparation; and the sojourn of Nicomedes in Boeotiaafforded him the occasion to foresee its possibility and prepare hisplans. Since the Persian invasion, Thebes had lost her importance,not only throughout Greece, but throughout Boeotia, her dependantterritory. Many of the states refused to regard her as their capital,and the Theban government desired to regain its power. Promises tomake war upon Athens rendered the Theban power auxiliary to Sparta:the more Thebes was strengthened, the more Athens was endangered: andSparta, ever averse to quitting the Peloponnesus, would thus erect abarrier to the Athenian arms on the very frontiers of Attica.

VII. While such were the designs and schemes of Nicomedes, theconspiracy of the aristocratic party could not be so secret in Athensbut what some rumour, some suspicion, broke abroad. The people becamealarmed and incensed. They resolved to anticipate the war; and,judging Nicomedes cut off from retreat, and embarrassed and confinedin his position, they marched against him with a thousand Argives,with a band of Thessalian horse, and some other allied troops drawnprincipally from Ionia, which, united to the whole force of the armedpopulation within their walls, amounted, in all, to fourteen thousandmen.

VIII. It is recorded by Plutarch, that during their march Cimonappeared, and sought permission to join the army. This was refused bythe senate of Five Hundred, to whom the petition was referred, notfrom any injurious suspicion of Cimon, but from a natural fear thathis presence, instead of inspiring confidence, would create confusion;and that it might be plausibly represented that he sought less toresist the Spartans than to introduce them into Athens--a proof howstrong was the impression against him, and how extensive had been theSpartan intrigues. Cimon retired, beseeching his friends to vindicatethemselves from the aspersions cast upon them. Placing the armour ofCimon--a species of holy standard--in their ranks, a hundred of thewarmest supporters among his tribe advanced to battle conscious of thetrust committed to their charge.

IX. In the territory of Tanagra a severe engagement took place. Onthat day Pericles himself fought in the thickest part of the battle(B. C. 457); exposing himself to every danger, as if anxious that theloss of Cimon should not be missed. The battle was long, obstinate,and even: when in the midst of it, the Thessalian cavalry suddenlydeserted to the Spartans. Despite this treachery, the Athenians, wellsupported by the Argives, long maintained their ground with advantage.But when night separated the armies [192], victory remained with theSpartans and their allies. [193]

The Athenians were not, however, much disheartened by defeat, nor didthe Spartans profit by their advantage. Anxious only for escape,Nicomedes conducted his forces homeward, passed through Megara,destroying the fruit-trees on his march; and, gaining the pass ofGeranea, which the Athenians had deserted to join the camp at Tanagra,arrived at Lacedaemon.

Meanwhile the Thebans took advantage of the victory to extend theirauthority, agreeably to the project conceived with Sparta. Thebes nowattempted the reduction of all the cities of Boeotia. Some submitted,others opposed.

X. Aware of the necessity of immediate measures against a neighbour,brave, persevering, and ambitious, the Athenian government lost notime in recruiting its broken forces. Under Myronides, an army,collected from the allies and dependant states, was convened toassemble upon a certain day. Many failed the appointment, and thegeneral was urged to delay his march till their arrival. "It is notthe part of a general," said Myronides, sternly, "to await thepleasure of his soldiers! By delay I read an omen of the desire ofthe loiterers to avoid the enemy. Better rely upon a few faithfulthan on many disaffected."

With a force comparatively small, Myronides commenced his march,entered Boeotia sixty-two days only after the battle of Tanagra, and,engaging the Boeotians at Oenophyta, obtained a complete and splendidvictory (B. C. 456). This battle, though Diodorus could find nodetails of the action, was reckoned by Athens among the most gloriousshe had ever achieved; preferred by the vain Greeks even to those ofMarathon and Plataea, inasmuch as Greek was opposed to Greek, and notto the barbarians. Those who fell on the Athenian side were firsthonoured by public burial in the Ceramichus--"As men," says Plato,"who fought against Grecians for the liberties of Greece." Myronidesfollowed up his victory by levelling the walls of Tanagra. AllBoeotia, except Thebes herself, was brought into the Athenianalliance--as democracies in the different towns, replacing theoligarchical governments, gave the moral blow to the Spartanascendency. Thus, in effect, the consequences of the battle almostdeserved the eulogies bestowed upon the victory. Those consequenceswere to revolutionize nearly all the states in Boeotia; and, bycalling up a democracy in each state, Athens at once changed enemiesinto allies.

From Boeotia, Myronides marched to Phocis, and, pursuing the samepolicy, rooted out the oligarchies, and established populargovernments. The Locrians of Opus gave a hundred of their wealthiestcitizens as hostages. Returned to Athens, Myronides was received withpublic rejoicings [194], and thus closed a short but brilliantcampaign, which had not only conquered enemies, but had establishedeverywhere garrisons of friends.

XI. Although the banishment of Cimon had appeared to complete thetriumph of the popular party in Athens, his opinions were not banishedalso. Athens, like all free states, was ever agitated by the feud ofparties, at once its danger and its strength. Parties in Athens were,however, utterly unlike many of those that rent the peace of theItalian republics; nor are they rightly understood in the vaguedeclamations of Barthelemi or Mitford; they were not only parties ofnames and men--they were also parties of principles--the parties ofrestriction and of advance. And thus the triumph of either wasinvariably followed by the triumph of the principle it espoused.Nobler than the bloody contests of mere faction, we do not see inAthens the long and sweeping proscriptions, the atrocious massacresthat attended the party-strifes of ancient Rome or of modern Italy.The ostracism, or the fine, of some obnoxious and eminent partisans,usually contented the wrath of the victorious politicians. And in theadvance of a cause the people found the main vent for their passions.I trust, however, that I shall not be accused of prejudice when Istate as a fact, that the popular party in Athens seems to have beenmuch more moderate and less unprincipled even in its excesses than itsantagonists. We never see it, like the Pisistratidae, leagued withthe Persian, nor with Isagoras, betraying Athens to the Spartan. Whatthe oligarchic faction did when triumphant, we see hereafter in theestablishment of the Thirty Tyrants. And compared with theiroffences, the ostracism of Aristides, or the fine and banishment ofCimon, lose all their colours of wrong.

XII. The discontented advocates for an oligarchy, who had intriguedwith Nicomedes, had been foiled in their object, partly by the conductof Cimon in disavowing all connexion with them, partly by the retreatof Nicomedes himself. Still their spirit was too fierce to sufferthem to forego their schemes without a struggle, and after the battleof Tanagra they broke out into open conspiracy against the republic.

The details of this treason are lost to us; it is one of the darkestpassages of Athenian history. From scattered and solitary referenceswe can learn, however, that for a time it threatened the democracywith ruin. [195]

The victory of the Spartans at Tanagra gave strength to the Spartanparty in Athens; it also inspired with fear many of the people; it wasevidently desirable rather to effect a peace with Sparta than tohazard a war. Who so likely to effect that peace as the banishedCimon? Now was the time to press for his recall. Either at thisperiod, or shortly afterward, Ephialtes, his most vehement enemy, wasbarbarously murdered--according to Aristotle, a victim to the hatredof the nobles.

XIII. Pericles had always conducted his opposition to Cimon withgreat dexterity and art; and indeed the aristocratic leaders ofcontending parties are rarely so hostile to each other as theirsubordinate followers suppose. In the present strife for the recallof his rival, amid all the intrigues and conspiracies, the openviolence and the secret machination, which threatened not only theduration of the government, but the very existence of the republic,Pericles met the danger by proposing himself the repeal of Cimon'ssentence.

Plutarch, with a childish sentimentality common to him when he meansto be singularly effective, bursts into an exclamation upon thegenerosity of this step, and the candour and moderation of thosetimes, when resentments could be so easily laid aside. But theprofound and passionless mind of Pericles was above all the weaknessof a melodramatic generosity. And it cannot be doubted that thismeasure was a compromise between the government and the more moderateand virtuous of the aristocratic party. Perhaps it was the mostadvantageous compromise Pericles was enabled to effect; for byconcession with respect to individuals, we can often preventconcession as to things. The recall [196] of the great leader of theanti-popular faction may have been deemed equivalent to the surrenderof many popular rights. And had we a deeper insight into theintrigues of that day and the details of the oligarchic conspiracy, Isuspect we should find that, by recalling Cimon, Pericles saved theconstitution. [197]

XIV. The first and most popular benefit anticipated from the recallof the son of Miltiades in a reconciliation between Sparta and Athens,was not immediately realized further than by an armistice of fourmonths. [198]

About this time the long walls of the Piraeus were completed (B. C.455), and shortly afterward Aegina yielded to the arms of theAthenians (B. C. 455), upon terms which subjected the citizens of thatgallant and adventurous isle (whose achievements and commerce seem noless a miracle than the greatness of Athens when we survey the limitsof their narrow and rocky domain) to the rival they had long so